‘Father!’
Tebaldo, incredulous, came limping across the floor. Paolo sprang up. In that instant his sword hand was nailed to the Duchess’s coffin by a thrown knife.
The Duke rolled clear. Paolo wrenched out the knife, dripping blood, and turned on his brother who, seizing Paolo’s sword from the floor, ran him through the neck as Sigismondo’s axe clove his spine.
Paolo toppled across the coffin, gripped the far edge and fell. His blood ran over the pearl-sewn dress, the velvet pall. As a priest tried to right the tilting coffin the body rose up. Paolo and the dead Duchess fell to the floor. Pearls bowled among the watchers’ feet, some leaving little red trails, some like tears.
They arrived then, priests from the Cathedral balcony, embouching from the tower stairs. The Cardinal Pontano, as he came, gave directions, pointing. Two priests hurried ahead, passing the catafalque and the ghastly tableau with amazed stares and swift crossing, but not halting until they reached the altar. There, one removed the Host and hurried away with it. The other lowered and extinguished the lamp that burned there. The Cathedral must be reconsecrated.
The Duke stood, his gaze on Paolo’s sprawled figure. Sigismondo did not move. Still masked, he leant on the long handle of his bloodstained axe, a headsman who had dared to desecrate this place in the sight of all. The Cardinal came forward; priests flooded round the group but kept their distance as at a plague.
The Duke’s guards held crossed pikes at the foot of the Palace stairs against the press of people there. Outside there was a trampling on the steps of the Cathedral beyond the great doors, and the clamour of the crowd, cries and screams, and the steady undertone of ‘Duca! Duca!’
The Duke’s sword shifted at a spasm of his arm, and blood slid from it.
‘My son, what have you done?’
The Duke did not answer or stir until the Cardinal put a hand on his shoulder and repeated the question. Then he turned his head as if in a dream.
‘He tried to kill me. Paolo! Who loved me.’
‘No, your Grace.’ The headsman, sonorous in that echoing space, answered. ‘He conspired to overthrow you and rule Rocca in your stead. He did not love you.’
Cardinal Pontano’s face was normally dour and now grim. ‘It is not to be believed. Have you proof of it?’
Sigismondo stripped the mask from his face and said, ‘I can prove it.’
‘Let the relics of St Agnes be brought,’ said the Cardinal. ‘Any speech now must be upon oath.’
A shout from the door drew their eyes as the Duke Ippolyto and the Lady Violante were allowed past the guard. He still held a drawn sword, the lady still gripped his arm; she wore a small grimace like a feral cat. They halted at the sight — the Duke and the bodies tumbled before him. The Duchess lay, eyes still closed but mouth ajar as if in protest. Her husband’s brother lay across her body in the gathering pool of his blood, his cloth of gold sleeves and her velvet skirts innocently drinking it in.
‘Mother of God!’
The Cardinal now held out in both hands a flat box that gleamed with a crust of rubies and diamonds.
‘Your Grace: the blessed relics of St Agnes will be your witness. If you are clear of this blood, call on God on the bones of His holy saint.’
The Duke stooped to lay his sword on the stones, then he pulled off his glove and laid his hand on the golden box.
‘I swear, before God and His saint, and as I hope for redemption, that I am not guilty of my wife’s blood. Of my brother’s death I am guilty. Why he would have killed me I do not yet understand.’
Sigismondo moved again and his deep voice sounded. ‘With your Grace’s leave and that of his Eminence: Rocca must be assured that its rightful Duke lives and the traitor is dead.’
‘Traitor…’
There was a whimper. Tebaldo was helping himself along by the bier, his face agonised, his stare fixed on his father’s body. He took a step away from the bier and fell on his knees, putting a hand to the floor as he reached the other to his father’s hand limp in its blood. His choked voice was the sound of mourning.
Violante left Duke Ippolyto and ran to Tebaldo. ‘No, no. Come with me. Father, I’ll vouch for him. Let him come with me.’
At this appeal to his power, the Duke seemed to wake. The habit of authority returned. ‘He is released into your custody. His guilt or innocence will be examined. Sigismondo, take-’ he pointed to his brother’s body — ‘take him out there and let the people see. We shall appear ourselves here on the Cathedral balcony. Once this uproar is calmed we can begin an immediate inquest into this terrible matter.’
Ippolyto helped Violante to lead her cousin aside. A page in slate-blue and yellow crept forward, trembling, to lend his arm to the boy. The two Dukes and the Cardinal swept away towards the turret stair and Sigismondo took up Paolo’s body — Tebaldo turning his head for a last desperate gaze. The priests were left to their task of restoring the Duchess to the catafalque and preparing to carry it to the Palace chapel as fast as possible from this unhallowed ground; and at last an old priest came out in a sacking apron, with bucket and cloth, to clean the terrible stain away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Dear God, what is happening?’ Cosima cried.
The crowd was shouting. They had answered Paolo’s speech with the shout; it had started from the edges and the side alleys: Duca! Duca! Lu-do-vi-co!
‘Why do they shout for the Duke?’ the Lady Donati asked. ‘Do they want to kill him?’
‘Who was Sigismondo chasing?’ Leandro asked. ‘Whose side is he on? I thought he was the Duke’s man.’
The crowd, at first bewildered, had taken up the shout with vigour. They had surged up the steps to the closed door of the Cathedral.
‘Benno, lean out at the corner there and look down our alley. Was that Barley I saw on the roan?’
‘Barley,’ Benno affirmed. Biondello, who had reacted badly to looking at the drop to the street, had rammed his face into the recesses of Benno’s shirt.
Leandro riveted his attention on those unresponsive ornamental facades, the Palace, the Cathedral, that hid his fate. He imagined Sigismondo failing, himself hunted down. He found he was grasping Cosima’s hand too hard, and as he apologised they looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. A rush of thoughts dazed him. Cosima di Torre… Sigismondo said the feud’s a fake… she’s lovely, she’s brave… married in the cell… but it’s a fake… danger… marriage… What’s to become of us? What is Sigismondo doing?
‘Oh!’ cried Cosima, ‘Look!’
The trumpets were being raised, the dignitaries emerged on the Cathedral balcony, the Duke — even from here startlingly pale — the Cardinal beside him, the Duke Ippolyto, and a crowd of clerics. A file of men in green and white came out on the Palace balcony. Two of them shifted the scattered benches and chairs, then joined the line. The crowd’s noise dropped in anticipation of an event and Sigismondo appeared masked in the Palace doorway, Paolo’s body in his arms. The crowd seemed to take one breath. He crossed the balcony onto the scaffold and laid the body down on the straw. He nodded to the drummers below who, all but caught out by the signal after so long, started raggedly but picked up into their steady rattling beat. Angelo appeared, carrying the axe across both hands, and came forward. The crowd swayed with internal dissensions but their noise was lost in the shuddering of the drums.